The year was 2008, location British Library London, the event a IT Security Conference sponsored by the UK Governments Home Office where I was giving a presentation and sitting on a panel, when a QA was posed by a delegate relating to possibility of China and their involvement in Cyber Attacks – See URL below https://www.itnews.com.au/news/china-blamed-for-cyber-terrorism-118089 Having already studied and researched the previous 2007 Titan Rain (TR) Cyber Attacks on the UK, US, and German Governments (See Fig 1 – media cover) with the TR attacks identified as coming from servers in China, whilst the Chinese government were never officially…
Author: Professor John Walker
Professor John Walker
John is the Principle at Shadow-Intelligence (Si), partnering with PALISCOPE, BreachAware and iStorage. He is a Visiting Professor at the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham, Trent University (NTU) and holds the appointment of Editor in Chief for the International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations (CFATI). For the last decade he has delivered training courses in the Middle, and Far East to Commercial, Industrial, the Financial Services Sector, and Military Agencies, including the UAE, US, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia (KL), Singapore, Argentina, and Sao Paulo He served in the Royal Air Force 22 years’, specialising in Counterintelligence, working with UK Agencies such as GCHQ/CESG, and others in the fields of SIGINT, COMINT and Satellite Communications, holding appointments such as System ITSO for a CIA SCIF. In the commercials sectors of IT/Cyber he has worked for/with Logica, Bae, T5, GM, Experian, Betfair, Palace of Westminster, House of Lords/Commons, TSol (Treasury Solicitors) and provided Consultancy to the Saudi Arabian MOD, TRA (Telecommunications Authority (Dubai) and the Military Academy of Malaysia (KL) on SOC, CSIRT, Digital Forensics and OSINT. Within the last 5 years he has focused on Geopolitics, with global expertise around the UAE and Russia, Anti-Terrorist Operations (ATO), Cyber-Warfare, Dezinformatsiya (Disinformation) and Maskirovka (Military Deception).
Like most during the coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting COVID-19 infections, I like the majority of responsible people have been applying the rules, and taking care to do my bit to mitigate the travelling viral conditions for the sake of getting back to normal (or to be correct to the New Normal). However, sadly there would seem to be some within our communities who feel the enforced rules simply do not apply to them! Thus, do we consider such members of our society to be reckless, careless, ignorant, or basically uneducated – or is it a mix of all four?…
It was in 1989 when Clifford Stoll first published The Cuckoos Egg, and in my opinion this is not only the best ever book written on the subject of Cyber (then IT) crime, but is also a must read for any person who aspires to join the world of Cyber Security. The book was also possibly the first ever serious factual account of cyber crimes, electronic incursion and state sponsored hacking. What is an amazing fact however is, the presented events in this fine read were detected from, what amounted to a tiny accounting deficiency of just 75-cents of unaccounted…
We are living in a world in which we have either embraced technology, or we have been forced to use it (an example her is online banking) – and of course, we also may accept that, today in the majority of cases we have must tollerate the state of the always-on, always connected world be it for business, or social purposes and we are now in the majority of cases either dependent, or hooked on technology! Our technological dependency in 2020, leveraging its ease opportunity arrives in a number of different forms, be they hand-held devices upon which multiples of…
Originally written and published way back in 2014 – and no longer available because of its age. However, given the predictions of the then day, I thought it would be well worth republishing as a reminder to all, that they need to look forward to the emerging Cyber Threats, and not back with the rear-view mirror focus of what has been. In fact, as always when I wrote this I was yet again told that I was suffering from paranoia, and again was over hyping the unknown unknown issues to an increased level of unfounded fear – now in 2020 look at the posed issues! In 2014 I…
On the 8th of October the BBC ran the concluding episode of the drama ‘Capture’ staring the impeccable Holliday Grainger (see Fig 1) – a drama which introduced the armchair viewer to the world of the Intelligence Services, the fight against terror and the manipulation of images to correct the power of prima facie evidence. For those sharp-eyed amongst the viewers, I am certain that in this final episode they will have also noticed the utilisation of DeepFake imagery – the question is, what is DeepFake, how is it used, and what are the overall implications? Fig 1 – Capture…
If you are looking for a development that goes well beyond your wildest imagination in all aspect – then you need to take a look at Dubai with its elaborate and stylish building pushing up from the sands with a speed that can’t fail to impress – with the a showcase of one of the world’s most impressive engineering projects standing smack-bang in the centre of engineering creativity, towering over the ever ever-pushing boarders of the City, the Burj Khalifa. All born out of the vision of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum this impressive City is an example of…
Having attended InfoSecurity 19, I must admit I was a tad disappointed with what was on offer – throw backs of the long, over deliberated ‘Insider Threat’, the usual focus on PCI, and of course the new the commercial money-spin kid on the block in the guise of GDPR. Add to this the rebranding of Anti-Virus/Malware Bronze Bullet solutions all wrapped up in a brand-new regurgitation of what was, into something that looks brand new, and that just about summed my day up – there were of course a few chinks in the cloud where innovation was shining through, but all in all, notwithstanding…
The year is 2019, and I doubt anyone attending Infosecurity Show 2019 would challenge the statement ‘We live in times of Insecurity’. With a backdrop covering a spectrum of Cyber Attacks, by example, with Yahoo suffering a 3 billion record compromise back in 2013, through to the Marriott Hack circa 2014 – 2018 which exposed 500 million data assets and of course end-users. And not overlooking the Equifax debacle which exposed 145+ million customers. To top those numbers of insecurity off, consider the report made by the researcher Bob Diachenko who in May 2019 discovered an exposure associated with the…
Having submitted an Expert Comment to Information Security Buzz, I have taken some time to extend this into a blog. As I said, having had some enforced downtime in 2019, it was a great opportunity and privilege to take up an invitation to attend the Paliscope offices located in Gothenburg, Sweden. The overall purpose of the visit was to take part in a collaboration project, and to gain insight into the evolution development plans to enhance their great investigative tool, as well as to take a first look at some of their exciting new products which will hit the market…
